I also don't see it happening. Cities and counties make truckloads of cash off of tickets and red light cameras. Plus it gives cops the ability to search people for prohibited plants. With driverless cars they wouldn't get ticket revenue, be able to use civil asset forfeiture or easily fill up the prisons with stoners.

Posted
by
Soulskill
on Friday April 10, 2009 @09:08PM
from the comfort-zone dept.

An anonymous reader writes "Keir Thomas has responded to the recent raft of news stories pointing out that Linux's share of the netbook market isn't as rosy as it used to be. Thomas thinks the problem boils down to a combination of unfamiliar software and unfamiliar hardware, which can 'push users over the edge.' This accounts for the allegedly high return rates of Linux netbooks. In contrast, although far from superior, Windows provides a more familiar environment, making the hardware issues (irritatingly small keyboard, screen etc.) seem less insurmountable; users are less likely to walk away. 'Once again Microsoft's monopoly means Windows is swallowing up another market.'"

Yeah, but no matter what it makes us, the US population in general will not know about it till well past 2010. It will take that long for our legislators to actually read the damn thing. Sure there will be watchdog groups who have read it before then, but like those that nay-sayed on the DMCA and US PATRIOT Act, they will be ignored until we are suffering the bad and unintended consequences of caveats in this bill.

You know, this bill is a perfect example of why we need DownsizeDC's Read the Bills Act. It is unacceptable that Congress votes for legislation they haven't fscking read. Please contact your Representative and Senators about that act.

Three other DownsizeDC campaigns that this bill perfectly shows the need for are:

Enumerated Powers Act - "It's time for Congress to, "Cite it, chapter and verse." Where do they derive their authority? When they pass new laws or spend taxpayer money, they should be required to point to specific language in the Constitution. The Enumerated Powers Act would require them to do precisely that."

One Subject at a Time Act - "Congress routinely passes unpopular laws by combining them with completely unrelated bills that have majority support".

After doing a little more research on him, here's another very good reasons to vote him out. Quoting his campaign website:

Pete was a strong supporter of the PATRIOT Act, creating the Homeland Security Department, profiling for terrorists at airports and allowing the National Security Agency to wiretap foreign terrorists making telephone calls into our country.

Excuse me, but what is the US Constitution's Second Amendment for, exactly?

"No free man shall ever be de-barred the use of arms. The strongest reason for the people to retain their right to keep and bear arms is as a last resort to protect themselves against tyranny in government." --Thomas Jefferson

"That the people have a right to keep and bear arms; that a well regulated militia composed of the body of the people trained to arms, is the proper. natural and safe defense of a free State. That standing armies in time of peace are dangerous to liberty, and therefore ought to be avoided, as far as the circumstances and protection of the community will admit; and that. in all cases, the military should be under strict subordination to and governed by the civil power." --George Mason

"The said constitution shall never be construed to authorize Congress to prevent the people of the United States who are peaceable citizens from keeping their own arms." --Samuel Adams

"Americans have the right and advantage of being armed -- unlike the citizens of other countries, whose governments are afraid to trust the people with arms." --James Madison

"Are we at last brought to such a humiliating and debasing degradation that we cannot be trusted with arms for our own defense? Where is the difference between having our arms under our own possession and under our own direction, and having them under the management of Congress? If our defense be the real object of having those arms, in whose hands can they be trusted with more propriety, or equal safety to us, as in our own hands?" --Patrick Henry

"[A]rms like laws discourage and keep the invader and the plunderer in awe, and preserve order in the world as well as property. The balance of power is the scale of peace. The same balance would be preserved were all the world destitute of arms, for all would be alike; but, since some will not, others dare not lay them aside. And while a single nation refuses to lay them down, it is proper that all should keep them up." --Thomas Paine

Internet Explorer may not have an auto-update system, but Microsoft Windows has an update system rivaling that of Ubuntu and OS X in automaticness, if not scale.

Since Windows encourages users to allow automatic updates installed at 3am every morning and also by default installs any pending critical updates at system power down, it doesn't seem like any supported version of Internet Explorer should remain unpatched for too long.

Ubuntu and Mint, at least, check daily. In Ubuntu when there are security updates you see a red arrow in the notification area, when non-security updates are available you see a orange sun(?). Also, if you go to "System"->"Software Sources" and then the "Updates" tab you can set it to apply security updates automatically (this really should be default, IMHO).

I still think Ubuntu's update system rivals Windows and OS X as it not only updates the base OS and OS vendor applications, it updates everything on the system.

The purpose of the project has always been to provide software that can be used to
losslessly remove Digital Rights Management (DRM) protection from music purchased through iTunes,
so that the buyer may exercise their right of fair use and play the music on
non-Apple devices (Hear Your Music aNywhere).

The software has gone through many incarnations. The original hymn has been succeeded by JHymn, QTFairUse6,
MyFairTunes, and others. Regardless of the program, the emphasis has always been squarely on fair use — not piracy. Any discussions of piracy have been strongly and actively discouraged on the site's forums.

For years now, Apple has been content to mostly ignore the Hymn Project.
At worst, they would introduce subtle changes to new versions of iTunes that would break the Hymn software.
Nobody really knows if this was done intentionally, but it was usually just a matter of time before a
new solution was found. This seemed like a reasonable approach for Apple to take. After all, why should they care? The DRM was only in place to placate the record companies.
Apple CEO Steve Jobs has even expressed his opinion that all music should be free of DRM.

Well, now things have changed. Recently, a new program called Requiem was announced that appears
to be a complete crack of the iTunes DRM scheme. Previous programs had relied on various forms of
trickery or memory hooks to access the unencrypted audio data — none had ever completely cracked
the encryption algorithms.

Requiem seems to have been the last straw. Earlier this week, the ISP hosting the site
received a Cease and Desist
order from Apple Legal, demanding that all downloads be removed from the site,
and that the site post no links to any programs that could remove DRM from Apple music or video.
Reportedly, similar C & D orders were also sent to at least one of the project's developers, and to another
ISP where Reqiuem had been hosted. Ironically, Requiem was never actually hosted on the Hymn site — merely mentioned and linked to in one of the forums.
Nevertheless, the Hymn Project has now come into the crosshairs of Apple's lawyers and,
lacking legal resources, has seen no choice but to comply with the order.

Brian Knotts writes: "News.com reports that congressional Democrats have introduced a bill creating a new corporate welfare program, which would force colleges into subscribing to music services, or else lose $100 billion of federal financial aid programs.

Unsurprisingly, the MPAA is on board with the bill.

"We very much support the language in the bill, which requires universities to provide evidence that they have a plan for implementing a technology to address illegal file sharing," said Angela Martinez, a spokeswoman for the MPAA.

mr100percent writes: MacNN reports that Apple has released the source code to Darwin 9.0, the backbone of OS X 10.5 Leopard. x86 and PPC versions are available. According to Apple's developer mailing list, some key drivers are missing however.